How to Read More and Better: A Practical Guide for the Modern Professional
Reading doesn’t need to be rushed, but are you doing it minimally well?
You’re a digital professional. Reading is your daily companion.
Maybe you didn’t realize it, but you spend most of your day reading.
So you’ll automatically be more productive if you can read more and better while spending the same amount of time, right?
But how to achieve this?
It’s not as complicated as it might sound.
Below, I have listed scientifically proven methods to achieve this goal.
Join me for the last untechnical reading of your life! :)
Don’t Forget Reading
Let’s face it, our reading habits are cycle-based.
It is normal to have times when we are more or less willing to read. And, of course, we end up increasing or decreasing our daily reading load from time to time.
Therefore, recognizing these periods is good for making plans. Organizing your reading cycles makes it easier for you to engage with the books.
All of this makes it easy for you not to forget to practice it at least once a day.
Carry Your Books With You
One way to keep the habit and even speed up reading your books is… to have them close at hand!
In many situations — when we have to face lines, wait for meetings, appointments, or even in traffic — having a book in hand can save you from boredom. Besides, of course, it adds a little productivity when you’re in uncreative leisure.
Remember that books are increasingly portable through cell phones and tablets, with Kindle.
The logic here is simple and requires little explanation: statistically speaking, being exposed to books increases literacy.
Extract the Best Ideas
Get used to the fact that you won’t remember all the details of your readings.
Over time, some memories become more distant and make room for more recent ones. This is very normal, especially in parts of a text that are not relevant to understanding the central idea.
At the same time, the main ideas of any text tend to stay longer in memories.
Therefore, recognizing the best ideas in the text helps to program your brain for reading.
This way, you can avoid paying excessive attention to the less important parts, which will be forgotten.
Exercise Some Reading
Some methods make you read faster for your purpose. Therefore, we researched and identified some ways that will certainly help you.
Be prepared to learn about practices that can help you in each situation. Whether to read the entire content and, at the same time, memorize as much information as possible; or to read a text dynamically and extract only the main ideas. Check it out:
Scanning
An example of a quick technique is scanning. To scan a text, you should not start reading traditionally.
First, scan the text to find the keywords. Keywords are usually nouns, strong names that have a great relationship and importance to the context.
After finding the keywords in the text, start reading through it. So you can already find details about the problem and the solution discussed in the content.
It is also valid to do a search in a dictionary or on the internet for the identified terms. Thus, you can accurately understand the universe in which they are inserted.
After this analysis, reading the rest of the text is optional, depending on the level of detail you want to explore.
Skimming
Skimming is a preliminary reading. Its main function is to map all the ideas in a book (or any other type of text) without starting the reading.
Then, to skimming, the reader can first analyze the title, intertitles, headings, graphics, and illustrations.
Once that’s done, reading the first few sentences of each chapter is also very helpful in shaping your observations.
Ready. You now have enough information to analyze a specific part of your reading. From there, it is possible to work on the relevant information contained there.
Reading Speed
This is a technique for developing peripheral vision. Featured by bestselling Tim Ferris, author of the eye-catching book 4-Hour Workweek, speed reading is a process to be applied constantly while reading.
Composed of two steps, it can be performed as follows:
Use a pen to guide your vision while reading;
On each line, start reading three words after the first. Likewise, finish reading each line three words from the end.
This habit will condition your vision to identify information contained in extreme regions of your vision. Thus, with practice, you will be able to visualize and understand the contents that are close to the stretch on which you are focused.
Reading Memorization
We’ve already mentioned examples to smooth the reading volume, as well as making it more agile. However, let’s complement all of this with good practice in memorizing content.
There are so many old and new titles we want to read that we rarely read a book twice. Cases like this are an exception, exclusive to the most special readings.
For everyone else, if you want to remember important points without having to worry about them all the time, there are smart ways to keep them in mind.
And to do this, just write down in succinct sentences the relevant information you identify. Also, jotting down the page and other coordinates can help with future recall.
Therefore, to increase reading memorization, you need to read a book only once, but revise your notes on it several times. While taking notes is laborious, you are free to do it however you adapt best.
